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When the "R" goes missing from R&D (2021)

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Re: When the "R" goes missing from R&D (2021)

#71

Post by RicoElectrico »

bgnn wrote: post #70

Chip design software GUIs are known to be unintuitive and unfriendly. I'm using them daily and it's in the way all the time. So I don't know what changed after these but I'm not seeing it as a user. Oh, also, when will we get version control support? It's 2023 an no chip design SW has this.

I am scratching my head as to why Cadence Virtuoso is de-facto standard in custom analog design. Barely anyone uses Synopsys Custom Compiler. Having worked at SNPS I prefer schematic entry features of CC. Probing is more efficient, adding stubs to instances as well, lot of QoL stuff like these dynamic alignment guides, and finally most tool options are not hidden under F3 (as in Virtuoso) and show on the toolbar instead. Now I work at a small company which uses Virtuoso and have to re-learn a lot of stuff even if keybinds are 95% the same. I don't know how ADE compares to PrimeWave (formerly SAE), as we at Synopsys did not dogfood it and used custom text-based DSLs for all simulations instead.

Re: When the "R" goes missing from R&D (2021)

#72

Post by nine_zeros »

The classic management-empire-driven-development where each management rung up to the lowest common ancestor wants credit for their own teams "moving the needle". They don't want to collaborate too much with other branches and in fact, want to dominate other branches.

Entirely a problem of deep nested trees in corporate hierarchies that is so easily alleviated with better incentive structures.

Re: When the "R" goes missing from R&D (2021)

#73

Post by bgnn »

RicoElectrico wrote: post #71
bgnn wrote: post #70

Chip design software GUIs are known to be unintuitive and unfriendly. I'm using them daily and it's in the way all the time. So I don't know what changed after these but I'm not seeing it as a user. Oh, also, when will we get version control support? It's 2023 an no chip design SW has this.

I am scratching my head as to why Cadence Virtuoso is de-facto standard in custom analog design. Barely anyone uses Synopsys Custom Compiler. Having worked at SNPS I prefer schematic entry features of CC. Probing is more efficient, adding stubs to instances as well, lot of QoL stuff like these dynamic alignment guides, and finally most tool options are not hidden under F3 (as in Virtuoso) and show on the toolbar inst…

There is literally no good reason other than it being the standard I think. Analog design engineers are very averse to change. Everone learned the quirks of Virtuoso by now and nobody dares to try something else because they are not so much better at the end.

Re: When the "R" goes missing from R&D (2021)

#74

Post by crq-yml »

jfim wrote: post #18
karmakaze wrote: post #16

I know this story is about company scale RnD. It can also be applied at any level. Research lives on a gray scale. At its core is growing understanding of your area so that you can do things you didn't know how to do before. I've always gravitated to the hardest problems to be solved so that I can learn something and make something that no one else had the vision or perseverance to make. So almost all my jobs have be…

Alternatively one can just use grid paper and some scissors. I bet you learned a lot writing that program as a kid though!

For making it really exact to the actual measurements(which presumably was the goal) grid paper isn't going to work, not without large sheets and drafting tools. Illustrative drawing can be done freehand and allowed to slop and distort things a bit, but for a practical interior design you need to get down to centimeters of space.

Re: When the "R" goes missing from R&D (2021)

#75

Post by a_bonobo »

bgnn wrote: post #68
ok_dad wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people with no output for years canned Often I see this happen, and the result is the company loses out somehow. I think maybe metrics for “output” are wrong in many cases, and you’ve just canned someone who had a useful or even critical role you didn’t know about. A lot of people who are important to company operations are invisible!

output doesn't capture accumulated know-how. If you fire researchers you loose know-how, hence you loose potential.

Output also doesn't capture 'enabling' functions: as a researcher I love to help others get to their goals, I love working on tricky problems and using my know-how to feel needed. I think I'm not alone in that.

Unfortunately that means that on paper, I have zero output while the people I help have all the output. Especially in computing/data science it's easy to fall into this trap; it takes a daily check-in to make sure that I'm working on the stuff that counts for me and my group.

Re: When the "R" goes missing from R&D (2021)

#76

Post by a_bonobo »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #9
datadrivenangel wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Work to rule! Do work exactly as specified, not including all the little things needed to actually make work happen. All the glue work needed to make an organization function just doesn't sometimes!

So why would anyone do an actual strike? This sounds better and more convenient.

>That's the American Way! If you don't like your job you don't strike. You just go in every day and do it really half assed.

- Homer Simpson

Re: When the "R" goes missing from R&D (2021)

#77

Post by shermantanktop »

dimask wrote: post #38
shermantanktop wrote: post #31

This team did it to themselves. “R” has little to do with it. They worked on the technical bits that they liked, created a terrible UX that sounds user-hostile, and then shocked-pikachu discovered that their jobs got cut in half. The decision to whisk UX duties to a team miles away was moronic, of course. But that was a reaction to the bad acts this team did - to their customers, to the business, and to themselves.

It seems that the appropriate design skillset was lacking in the R&D group. Also maybe it was a first attempt to make something, and they did not get through a second iteration to improve it. Why do we expect that skilled SEs are also skilled UX designers? As everything, design requires training. The problem seemed to be such people trained in design were missing from the R&D team, which sounds like management's faul…

Sure, the judgment that was missing is better assigned to the “management” skillset rather than the “technical” skillset.

But everyone needs some of both - the most purely technical engineer still needs the personal judgment to hit dates that matter, show up when others need them, and avoid overinvesting in purely play activities.

In this case, better managers would help but honestly any experienced engineer would know that constant customer complaints mean that something is going to change.

Re: When the "R" goes missing from R&D (2021)

#78

Post by mjcohen »

a_bonobo wrote: post #75
bgnn wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

output doesn't capture accumulated know-how. If you fire researchers you loose know-how, hence you loose potential.

Output also doesn't capture 'enabling' functions: as a researcher I love to help others get to their goals, I love working on tricky problems and using my know-how to feel needed. I think I'm not alone in that. Unfortunately that means that on paper, I have zero output while the people I help have all the output. Especially in computing/data science it's easy to fall into this trap; it takes a daily check-in to make…

You need to document everything you do.

Re: When the "R" goes missing from R&D (2021)

#79

Post by wombatpm »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #64
digdugdirk wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet I still want nothing more than to see Solidworks burn in the deepest depths of Dante's Inferno.

Wait - isn't the 9th circle of Dante's Hell a frozen wasteland?

He meant the Lake of Fire which is reserved for heretics, non believers, pedophiles, and CAD software

Re: When the "R" goes missing from R&D (2021)

#80

Post by btbuildem »

hinkley wrote: post #67
debacle wrote: post #45

In my experience, this was likely entirely driven by one person, my guess would be two levels above the author in the org chart. It's sometimes frighteningly easy to convince business leaders that the dev teams are wasting a ton of time, doing the wrong thing, etc. It's even easier when that direction is coming from a consultant (might not be in this case, but I've seen it happen a few times). Someone who was suppose…

I've worked at plenty of places where the dev team was wasting their time, doing the wrong thing. You know who we blamed? Someone two, three levels above us in the org chart.

Did that have any effect? Usually people lower in the org chart have less power than those closer to the root, so I'd expect that complaint to be filed away an no-op'ed on.
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